Hunger

Gather around children, grandpas got a story for you. I promise it is not too scary, though, it does come with a warning. It is an old story. One from my childhood all those years ago. One that I have not told you before, but one you are old enough now to hear. Old enough to hear about the truth of our world. The truth of the things that lurk in the shadows and only come out at night. Now, I know your grandmother and your parents would not approve of such a story, but that is why you need to hear it. You see, they are too old to believe. They are far too worried about what swims on the surface of our world to care about what lies beneath the waves of reality. But I have seen it firsthand, and now, I would like to share the knowledge with my kin. The only kin who will honestly believe what I have to say and not brush it off as simply a fairytale or spooky story. Are we all comfortable? Good. Now pay attention because you never know when you may run into a new friend. A new shadow.

I was just a young lad when your great-grandparents and I built our new home. They had saved for years to buy the old farmstead. They say that it was one of the first farmsteads this far west and that the home which stood was of original construction. I remember that old home. We had turned its small one room floorplan into a storage shed after we had built up the new house. It was a small building. A sod roof and mud-insulated walls staved off the winter’s cold and the summer heat. I had fallen in love with it from the very beginning. I remember spending my days pretending to be a homesteader like those who had built it. I would help my father work the land and return home in the night to that homestead, rather than our new four-bedroom wood-framed and shingle-roofed monstrosity. This old homestead was like something they taught about in school. Something from history that I had in my own backyard! Some nights, I would even sneak from my bedroom with a sleeping bag and hurry to the old farmhouse. I would move aside the various tools and boxes and curl up on the dirt floor. The old lantern which swung from the center of the rafters would cast shadows that would dance around the walls and continue to jig into my dreams.

Eventually, your great-grandparents accepted my infatuation with the old hut and built another shed for the tools and such. I was so excited when they had done it! They had waited until I had gone off to summer camp so to surprise me when I returned home. You should have seen my smile when I got off that camp bus and saw the home returned to its old state! My father, your great-grandfather had spent days patching up the holes and fixing the old wooden door and the shutters on the sole window. They told me with a hug that the house was all mine! I could fill it with whatever I wanted and that is just what I did. With my father’s help we crafted a bedframe from spare timber and placed on it an old mattress that had been gathering dust. We even got the old chimney cleaned up so I could light a fire to add to the warm glow of the lantern. When the renovation finally completed and I spent my first night alone in that old farmhouse, well, that was one of the greatest nights of my life.

That same night, as I was on the very edge of sleep, I saw the shadows on the walls slow their dance. Their jigs swirled and swam until the form of a young settler boy not much older than I appeared in those shadows. As my eyes fluttered and my mind drifted away I saw the shadow boy take shape and rest with folded arms upon the wall. He leaned and watched with a relaxed demeanor. I did not feel fear children, no, I felt a flutter in my stomach as a rush of excitement overtook me. Was the boy real? Was he the shadow of the boy who had slept in this home before me? Somehow I knew, these were questions which could only be answered in my dreams. And so, I slept. I slept and I dreamt a dream so clear and perfect you would have thought it were real…. Boy, did it ever feel just so darn real.

What was it you ask? Well, lean in close children and I will tell you. I dreamt that I had awoken from a nap beneath the great willow in the yard. It felt like one of the longest and most refreshing naps of my life, like I had been asleep for ages dreaming of new houses and summer camp and school. It felt like my entire life to that point had been a long, sweet dream beneath the willow. With a rub of my eyes, I arose in the yard of the homestead. I scanned the horizon and saw nothing for miles. An endless ocean of wild grasses as tall as I waving in the soft summer breeze. There were no roads, just a trail of wagon-ruts in the mud. There was no town in the distance, its buildings did not block my view with their ugly brick and mortar. There was just an endless, cloudless, blue sky which could swallow you whole. I did not feel worry for what was missing, I felt at home. At home in the prairies.

I remember turning to see the homestead: Its shutters wide and chimney billowing soft smoke. There was a smell in the air, and I instantly recognized it as my mother’s saskatoon-berry pie. The thing is, my mother, my real mother, your great-grandmother, was famous for her rhubarb pie. Yet, the smell of the saskatoon berries baking was irresistible and familiar. I walked up the drive to the newly crafted door of the one-room sod-roofed home and… I remember pausing. I felt so at home in this world, yet I remember thinking that I did not even know my dream mother’s name. If I were to knock at the door, would she recognize me? Would she find it strange that I had knocked rather than walk straight in? Would she chase off the random young boy who had come wanting a slice of pie, or would she invite me in and cut me a piece? I did not have time to decide as the door before me was swung wide. A fair woman stood bearing a smile and an apron covered in flour hung over her protruding pregnant belly. I remembered then that we had another expected sibling on the way. I was going to be a big brother, and oh, how excited I was! How excited we all were. My entire dream family and I.

She knelt and wrapped me in a great hug before calling me a name I did not remember being called before, “Eli, where have you been? Have you been napping under that willow again?” I remember her voice; it was smooth like butter and soft as a butterfly’s wings.

I nodded in reply as she stepped aside and led me to a handmade wooden chair at the corner of the table. Before me, was a slice of the best darn Saskatoon berry pie in the entire world. Made with sugar I somehow remembered getting with pa from the trading post as a treat for my mother. It was truly divine.

After greedily eating the pie I remember looking around the table at the people I knew I, or Eli, genuinely loved to call family. There was Ma and Pa at either end and an older boy, obviously my elder brother, staring at me across the oak planks of the table. His soft blue eyes pierced mine as his face fell from that of a soft smile to one of sadness and regret. He reached across the table and grabbed my hand as the rest of the world froze. He spoke softly, “Eli, I see you have found a friend, it is okay to leave me. You know I cannot join you after what I have done. After what I have become. Please, let this boy awake and forget me. I am so, so sorry. You know I had to do it right? You know I had to so you all could survive. Please, please forgive me.”

I woke with a start in the old homestead. The lantern’s light had flickered and faded as its fuel fell low. I shivered at the oncoming fall cold. It was growing colder by the day, and soon enough, the morning dew would turn to frost. For a few moments, I did not know where, or who, I was… Yes, yes that is right young one, I am your grandpa, but in that moment all those years ago after that first dream, I could not recall for a few moments. As I lay staring at the timber of the rafters above my head, it all came flooding back. All the memories of my real life, of the life I had thought I left behind, begun to be clear again in my mind. I lay there a while, hands behind my head, and recalled what I had just dreamt. Even then I remember the feeling that what I’d just experienced had been something real, something true. With a smile and a shiver, I threw off the heavy bedcover your great-great-grandmother had sewn me and reached for the lantern. I filled it with some oil from above the hearth and lit it once again. I looked around and saw the shadows had once more begun to dance and jig their merry dance. When I got back to where the young settler boy had leaned I nearly dropped the darned thing in fright. He was there. The settler boy was crouching in the corner of the room: A physical being in shadow form. In that moment I had felt joy at knowing he was real, but in the next, I felt terror. The boy was motioning with a dark finger against his lips to be silent before pointing at the door. Somehow, I understood the silent boys’ warning, and with a leap I was back in bed with the covers over my head as if their soft weaves would protect me from whatever evil was about to come.

From beneath my covers, I heard the sounds. They were faint at first, soft huffing and thuds of hooves in the mud leading toward the door of the homestead. Huff-huff, I remember it, Huff-huff, it came to the door. I shrieked as something large clawed softly on the outside of the door. The beast whispered through the cracks in a ragged voice, one that sounded like it had once been, but was no longer human, “Eee-iii.” It moaned before it leapt away into the night.

Now children, I know you may call your old grandpa a coward, but I ran for the house, I ran for the house and for nearly a month I did not return to that homestead. Your great-grandparents thought I had heard a coyote sniffing at the door in the night. But I knew, I knew what I had heard. What I had seen. The pie. Eli. The brother. I knew it was real, and I knew I had to face my fears and return to that world, for sleeping in my bed in that giant monstrosity my parents had built brought only regular dreams. Regular dreams and a reoccurring nightmare of that awful voice at the door, “Eee-iii.”

And so, in mid fall I once again returned to the homestead in the yard. I once again lit the lantern and hung it from the rafters. I once again saw the shadows dance and jig. And once again, I saw the settler boy emerge from the shadows and lean against the wall with folded arms. Though this time, my stomach was filled with butterflies for a different reason. No, maybe not butterflies, for butterflies are light and bright and that was not what I felt. What I felt was a belly full of moths of terror. Terror at the thought of the beasts’ return.

This time, I did not wake beneath the willow, rather I was sitting against the wall of the homestead, looking out at the fields before me. What I saw was not a crop of wheat or grains swirling in the wind. What I saw before me was a field of stubs and straw. My stomach felt the moths of fear and had begun to churn in hunger. The crops had been hit with the blight. Decimated in its entirety. All our food, all our money, all our future, wilted before my eyes. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Eli’s brother. He spoke to me in a soft voice, and the world around did not freeze, “Eli, this winter is going to be a tough one. With the crops…” His voice had choked up, and tears had begun to well in his eyes, “With the crops gone, I do not know how we are going to make it. But you got to be strong okay. Be strong for Ma and Pa. They need us now more than ever.” He leaned in and wrapped me in a hug as the world around us faded away.

The beast did not return that night, and neither did Eli’s shadow, but in the morning when I woke, I felt… strange. As if I had not eaten in days. As if the crops truly had been hit with blight, and my real parents had been the ones sobbing in the homestead while their boys sat outside, unsure as to whether or not they would survive the coming winter.

For many nights after, I did not return to sleep in the homestead. That feeling, that feeling of hunger had lingered for days. I did not like it. I had never felt anything like that before, and I did not ever wish to again. But a few weeks later, after the first snowfall, I could no longer resist the urge to return to the dream world once again.

Lantern lit and covers pulled tight I waited for the settler boy Eli to return, but this night, he did not appear after a dance of shadows. This night, he slowly appeared from the darkness. He slowly emerged and drew close before curling into the bed beside me. I felt his fear. I felt his pain. I felt his hunger as I drifted off to sleep. I knew then that this dream would not be a pleasant one.

I awoke in a bed I did not recognize as my own. It was Eli’s, tucked in the corner of the small home. I felt pain in my stomach as if the moths had given birth to worms. Worms which threatened to eat their way out if they were not fed. My stomach gurgled and turned as I grabbed it. Outside the winds of winter howled, and they had just yet begun. In my mind I knew the food had run out already. I scanned the room, on the fire a pot of water with a single chopped onion brewed. We would be having boiled onion for dinner again. One onion for a family of four with one more on the way. With that thought a great and deep sadness washed over me. I saw my father kneeling before my mother as she sat at the table. There was blood on his hands and on my mother’s dress. I would no longer be a big brother. I began to cry as footfalls in the snow outside led to a rattling of the door. With a blast of cold and snow my brother threw open the door and smiled proudly before declaring, “Looks like we’ll be eating good tonight folks!”

He held before him a hare he had caught with one of the snares he had set before the snow had begun to fall. He looked at me and smiled, he had not yet seen mother and father. “You hungry Eli?” He shouted. He seemed so proud then. So proud and so happy. He thought he had saved the day, but as he followed my gaze to mother and father at the table his face turned to show that he realized the day had already been lost.

When I woke this time, the lantern still burned brightly, and Eli stood once again with his arms folded leaning against the wall. I looked at him and asked him if what I was seeing was real. Was this really your life? Did you lose a younger sibling to hunger? Had you felt this way when you were alive? I did not finish my questioning as a lurching and creaking came from the roof and I froze. It was back! The beast had returned! It was on the roof and was going to dig its way through! The beast huffed and begun to claw at the sod. Dust and dirt rained throughout the house. This time, Eli did not cower in fear. This time, Eli stood and cupped his hands and shouted a silent shout. When he did, the beast halted. It halted and huffed a final huff before it leapt from the roof and crunched on the snow, it paused a moment and then vaulted away into the night once again.

That, unfortunately, was the last night I slept in the homestead for a while. You see children, my parents and I left for the holiday season to be with family in another town and we did not return until school begun again, and the true winter had kicked in. That dream, the hunger was only worse, and Eli and his family had been huddled around the fireplace for warmth, their bodies were frail and weak. At the end of that dream, I looked over at the brother and saw something in his eye. A thought. A dark thought as he looked back and slowly smiled. That dream lasted until the family drifted off to sleep and in the darkness, Eli’s brother stood, kissed his mother on the cheek, gave his father’s sleeping body a hug, ruffled Eli’s hair, and disappeared into the night, leaving only a note on the table.

That morning, after that dream in the dead of winter, I understood what had happened. That morning, when the lantern’s light flicked and I saw Eli sitting at the end of my bed, head-in-hands, sobbing a silent sob I knew. I knew that next night’s dream would be the last. That the story had neared its completion.

I returned home that afternoon with a heavy heart, and as I lay to sleep with the lantern lit I stopped and allowed Eli to crawl in beside me. I comforted him as I faded to sleep. Eli and I awoke in the dream world looking at the paper which the brother had left the night before. It read simply, “I love you all. Please forgive me. Do not let it go to waste. Do what you must and survive the winter… P.S. Stay strong Eli; I love you buddy.” The dream then flashed to an image of Eli’s mother and father kneeling in the snow before Eli’s brother’s swinging feet. He had climbed the high branch of the willow under which Eli had always napped and done what had needed to be done to feed the family. The family would survive the winter. One less mouth to feed and meat to feed the worms in their bellies.

I awoke to a roar at the door. The clawing was merciless. The beast would be in at any moment, and Eli’s shadow seemed terrified in bed beside me. Now children, I am proud to say that your grandpa was not a coward this time. No, I swung my feet from the bed. I walked to the door, and I threw it open. Outside the door stood Hunger. The beast of nature, one which can drive people to do the most horrid of things. The beast that had once been Eli’s brother. It stepped back. Its skeletal frame seemed almost human but larger. Rotted flesh and maggots hung loosely and fell from its bony figure. Atop its shoulders was an amalgamation of skulls: Human, Canine, and Cervidae. Its antlers were long and lacking any felt. Its claws were that of a wolf or a bear and it walked on cloven hooves. Around its neck was strung a chord of rope twisted into thirteen knots and a loop. And curled in a sling around its chest lay the corpse of a young baby. This was no monster. This was a young man who had done what he had thought was right so his family could survive. This was a boy who had delved into the darkest urges of hunger and had decided to fight them. He had felt the fear and knew he could not allow his family to succumb to such a death. He had sacrificed himself. He did not wish harm on me or Eli. He was not here to eat. He was here for forgiveness. I stepped forward into the darkness of the night. My bare feet crushed through the hard crust of snow and slipped into the freezing layers beneath. I had felt the hunger, but I had seen the love in the brother’s eyes when he left that night. I reached out and hugged the giant beast. It stank, and its fleshy frame gave way as I squeezed but still I stayed for many moments. At last, I turned back to Eli’s shadow in the candlelight and reached out a hand. Eli stepped forward and I stepped back to allow the two to embrace.

As the two collided the beast began to shift and transfigure. Its bones rattled and shrunk. Its skulls withered and died like the crops of their field so long ago. In mere moments, the beast had taken the shape of the brother. The noose around his neck faded away and the infant begun to coo. All that was left was the love of a brother. I watched as the trio turned, and Eli and his brother walked hand-in hand toward the open door of the farmhouse. On the threshold the brother stopped and turned my direction. He gave a ghostly nod which I knew in my soul was of gratitude and respect before He and Eli faded into the dancing shadows of the walls of the homestead with their infant sibling in tow. The brother had been forgiven, and the family reunited with those who had succumbed to the hunger.

I never slept in that old farmhouse again; thought it remains untouched right outside by the oak tree. Yes children that is the house just out there. I point to the window with a shaky finger as my kin race to the window to peer at the old homestead in the yard. Now, heed me when I say to be respectful of that house and its furnishings. Especially the lantern. For when you light it in the night, you will see Eli’s brother and his family dancing happily in the shadows. They dance a lively jig all through the night. Happy and healthy and warm, they dance. Sometimes even, you can smell the scent of saskatoon berry pie on the wind or hear a baby’s soft cooing off the walls. All I ask you children, is to be respectful. Be respectful of the house. Be respectful of those that came before. Be respectful of the sacrifices they made and the love they lost. Now get your jammies on and get ready for bed, I hear your mother calling.

Credit: Brady Garner